On the construction and management of hospitals for the insane : with a particular notice of the institution of Sieburg / by Maximilian Jacobi ; translated by John Kitching ; with introductory observations, &c., by Samuel Tuke.

  • Carl Wigand Maximilian Jacobi
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the construction and management of hospitals for the insane : with a particular notice of the institution of Sieburg / by Maximilian Jacobi ; translated by John Kitching ; with introductory observations, &c., by Samuel Tuke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    15/394
    for three hundred persons or any larger number, will be managed so economically as one, containing from fifty to an hundred and fifty, would be likely to be. Everything seems as if it must be done upon a magnificent scale in these large establishments, which, of course swells the outlay; and from the returns made to Parliament of the average weekly cost of patients in the county asylums, I observe, that Cheshire, a small establishment, is lower than Lancashire; that Norfolk is lower than Middlesex; and Sufi'olk than the West-Riding of Yorkshire. * Is it not also worthy of consideration, whether benefit would not be derived from diffusing the knowledge of the treatment of this disease more widely; which would be the consequence of establishing a larger number of hospitals for those who labour under it. It must, how- ever, be borne in mind, that Dr. Jacobi, in speaking of the num- ber of patients in one asylum, considers them as being mainly of the curable class, which certainly materially affects the question, so far as the medical duties of the Director are concerned. 2. Every one who has visited our large asylums will have been struck with the number of patients whose countenances betoken congenital idiotism, or hopeless fatuity. Many of these hardly come within the scope of a hospital for the In- sane ; and though they cannot be done with at home, and are not fit subjects for our common workhouses, they might be pro- vided for in a building of a more simple construction, and under, perhaps, a less expensive economy than can be properly adopted in a curative establishment. The subtraction of these patients from our existing establishments, would greatly relieve many of them; but I venture to express a doubt, whether any patient should be placed in an incurable establishment, who would feel the removal as the sentence of an utterly hopeless condition, or who is in a violent and noisy state. Patients of this latter class require the peculiar provisions of a house specially provided for the Insane; and there can be no doubt, that medicine has considerable power in alleviating the terrible paroxysms which are sometimes witnessed in cases where the idea of permanent * Statistics of English Lunatic Asylums, &c.—Uy William Tai r, p. 20.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3